“He behaved strangely about that evidence,” said Eileen. “What puzzles me still is why he produced so much and yet kept back the rest. You see, he put in the papers he had found in the secret passage, and they were enough to have me shot, yet he hushed up the fact about the passage, which, of course, was utterly damning. It looked as though he wanted to give me a sporting chance. But that was not his character, because he was a simple young man. He could have destroyed the papers as easily as he kept back the fact about the underground passage, but he produced them, and I escaped only by the skin of my teeth. Read me that riddle, Wickham Brand!” “It’s easy,” said Brand. “The fellow was pulled two ways. By duty and--sentiment.” “Love,” said Eileen in her candid way. “Love, if you like.... It was a conflict. Probably his sense of duty (I know these German officers!) was strong enough to make him hand up the papers to his superior officers. He couldn’t bring himself to burn them--the fool! Then the other emotion in him----” “Give it a name,” said Eileen, smiling in her whimsical way. “That damned love of his,” said Brand, “tugged at him intolerably, and jabbed at his conscience. So he hid the news about the passage, and thought what a fine fellow he was. Mr. Facing-Both-Ways. Duty and love, both sacrificed!... He’d have looked pretty sick if you’d been shot, and it wasn’t to his credit that you weren’t.” Eileen O’Connor was amused with Brand’s refusal to credit Franz von Kreuzenach with any kindness. “Admit,” she said, “that his suppression of evidence gave me my chance. If all were told, I was lost.” Brand admitted that. “Admit also,” said Eileen, “that he behaved like a gentleman.” Brand admitted it grudgingly. “A German gentleman.” Then he realised his meanness, and made amends. “That’s unfair! He behaved like a good fellow. Probably took big risks. Everyone who knows what happened must be grateful to him. If I meet him I’ll thank him.” Eileen O’Connor held Brand to that promise, and asked him for a favour which made him hesitate. “When you go on to the Rhine, will you take him a letter from me?” “It’s against the rules,” said Brand, rather stiffly. Eileen pooh-poohed these rules, and said Franz von Kreuzenach had broken his, for her sake. “I’ll take it,” said Brand. That night when we left Eileen O’Connor’s rooms the Armistice was still being celebrated by British soldiers. Verey lights were rising above the houses, fired off by young officers as symbols of their own soaring spirits. Shadows lurched against us in the dark streets as officers and men went singing to their billets. Some girls of Lille had linked arms with British Tommies and were dancing in the darkness, with screams of mirth. In one of the doorways a soldier with his steel hat at the back of his head and his rifle lying at his feet, kept shouting one word in a drunken way: “Peace!... Peace!”